The unfair trade in fresh produce

 

Are you paying a fair price for your food?

 [First published in Organic NZ, May/June 2011]

 Home-grown apricots are sweeter than those imported out-of-season 
from California - in every way.

In the olden days (before the 1980s) if you wanted to buy table grapes you waited until grape season, then walked or cycled to the nearest greengrocer. There you found grapes which were grown in New Zealand, and went on sale the day after picking.

Those grapes probably cost more in real terms than grapes cost today, and they were only available for two months of the year. On the plus side they were much fresher (and hence tastier and more nutritious), you didn’t have to own a car and pay more than two dollars for a litre of petrol to drive to a supermarket to get them, and they did not have a disgracefully large carbon and chemical footprint, acquired as they were grown and fumigated in California and then shipped right across the Pacific Ocean.

Hidden costs of cheap imports

 

How can grapes imported from California now be cheaper than grapes grown in New Zealand then? There are two main ways. Firstly, the grape-buyer is not being charged the full environmental costs of their energy- and chemical-intensive production and distribution. Secondly, the grape-buyer is not paying the full social costs of their production. The people who pick and pack the grapes, and care for the vines, are not being paid fairly or treated fairly.

Underpaid workers

 

Even organic fruit growers in California, who are protecting the environment and their workers from especially nasty chemicals (like methyl bromide, used in strawberry production), may not be paying their workers more than the current Californian minimum wage of US$8 per hour (NZ$10.96 – the New Zealand minimum wage in April 2011 was NZ$13). Nor will they be paying any overtime. Not even after a 10-hour day, or a 60-hour, six-day week. The average wage in the industry has dropped to $US5 an hour, with workers earning a little more by being paid a piece rate for the amount of fruit they pick. For grapes this is as low as 1–5 cents per pound. Pruning grapes is also done on a piece rate, which means a long day to earn as little as US$80. Wages for farm workers are so low that they are more than twice as likely as other Americans to be food insecure (45%) and receiving food stamps (48%).¹

Working conditions

 

When Californian fruit is being picked over the hottest months of the year field temperatures often exceed 35º C. The fruit is rushed straight to cooling sheds to chill down before being put into refrigerated trucks for distribution, but there is no cooled place for the field workers to have their one statutory 30-minute meal break of the day (after five hours work, which often begins at 6 am). Nor do most employers provide drinking water, or shaded places for breaks. In 2008 two workers died from heatstroke in vineyards in California. One victim was a 37-year-old man and the other a pregnant 17-year-old.

How can the Californian fruitpickers (tens of thousands of them) be so badly exploited? The majority are migrant workers, mostly from southern Mexico and Guatemala. They are not in the USA legally, and many speak neither English nor Spanish. On their half-broken backs a global industry of produce exports from California worth hundreds of billions of dollars has been built in the last twenty years.

Creating demand in NZ for Californian fruit

 

California has one million acres of vineyards, with 48% of this acreage used for wine grapes, 40% for raisins and 12% for table grapes. Most of this production leaves California, either to the rest of the US or the rest of the world. New Zealand started importing fresh produce from the US in 1996. In 1999 New Zealand hosted the annual meeting of APEC (Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation – a US-dominated regional trade bloc). This featured a special reception for produce importers hosted by various American agencies, showcasing Californian grapes and stone fruit. The following year the agricultural attaché at the US Embassy in Wellington, David Young, and the New Zealand representative of the California Table Grape Commission and the California Tree Fruit Agreement, Lisa Cork, reported on the US Department of Agriculture’s website that ‘The table grape market is ripe for picking; New Zealand does not produce significant quantities.’² New Zealand’s purchases of US grapes in 1999 had increased by 25% to 3,370 tons, valued at $5.7 million, which represented a 52% market share for the US.

Stone fruit imports and sales (mainly nectarines and peaches) were also up (over 1,250 tonnes and $1.8 million dollars) and Young and Cork attributed this to ‘Effective trade education and market promotion work by the CTFA, backed by Market Access Program funds.’ The US Market Access Program ‘…uses funds from the US Department of Agriculture’s Commodity Credit Corporation to help US producers, exporters, private companies, and other trade organizations finance promotional activities for US agricultural products … Activities financed include consumer promotions, market research, technical assistance, and trade servicing.’³ Young and Cork attributed the rise in sales to the (US government-subsidised) California Tree Fruit group conducting consumer awareness programmes in New Zealand, beginning in 1998. These were designed to create demand for summer fruits in winter. They included two years of national advertising, plus in-store demonstrations, recipe leaflets and various public relations efforts.

So the American government, and American agribusiness, has plenty of money to spend encouraging New Zealanders to buy imported fruit out of season, but not enough money to pay a fair wage to seasonal workers who pick the fruit, or provide them with decent working conditions. This sad state of affairs is not confined to the US, but is worldwide.

Campaign against cheap fresh produce imports 

 

In Switzerland last year the Platform for Sustainable Social Agriculture and a coalition of parliamentarians launched a protest campaign against cheap fresh produce imports. They said that huge industrial farms in southern Spain and Italy were employing illegal immigrants in intolerable conditions. Wages were as low €20 (NZ$38.76) for a 14-hour day, and living conditions were also terrible.⁴ This has been well-documented by the British journalist Felicity Lawrence,⁵ while the American writer Eric Schlosser has exposed gross exploitation in the processing and retail side of the US food industry as well.⁶ It is happening in New Zealand too, with several successful prosecutions for people trafficking and exploitation of fruit pickers to date.⁷

Eating imported produce out of season makes no environmental sense, and is hideously exploitative of people. In many cases Third World farmers can no longer make a decent living growing staple crops at home because unfair trade rules, and huge production and export subsidies given to American and European agribusiness companies, mean that they can’t compete in their home market. Via Campesina, the worldwide federation of peasant and small farmer organisations, has a core demand: ‘Take agriculture out of the WTO’ (World Trade Organisation).⁸ If you want food to be fair for everyone, ending the trade in unfair food is a good place to start.

Sources and footnotes

1. These and other facts about wages and conditions for American farm workers are from the Southern Poverty Law Center’s November 2010 publication Injustice on our plates (www.splcenter.org/get-informed/publications/injustice-on-our-plates/food-industries) and from the Food First publications Migrant Farmworkers: America’s New Plantation Workers (Food First Backgrounder Spring 2001, 10:2), and Food Workers-Food Justice: Linking food, labour and immigrant rights (Food First Backgrounder Summer 2010, 16:2).
2. www.fas.usda.gov/info/agexporter/2000/July/usfruit.html
3. www.fas.usda.gov/mos/programs/map.asp
4. www.freshplaza.com/news_detail.asp?id=62144
5. Felicity Lawrence, Not on the Label, London, Penguin Books, 2004
6. Eric Schlosser, Fast Food Nation: The dark side of the all-American meal, New York, Perennial, 2002
7. Tony Wall, ‘Slaving for a living’, Sunday Star Times, 11 January 2008
8. viacampesina.org